


Alphabet Drabbles

by ShadowyStar



Category: Coldfire Trilogy - C. S. Friedman
Genre: And Then He Doesn't, Angst, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Damien Vryce Has The Patience Of A Saint, Drabble Collection, Drama, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friends With Benefits, Friends to Lovers, Friendship/Love, Gerald Tarrant Is Bad At Feelings, Humor, M/M, Mind Links, Pining, Pining Gerald, and then he isn't, so much drama, sort of, with some introspection thrown in
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-12
Updated: 2015-05-14
Packaged: 2018-03-02 02:37:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 1,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2796575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowyStar/pseuds/ShadowyStar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pretty much what it says on the tin, a place to store my drabbles before they turn into fully grown plot bunnies and start biting.</p><p>Ch 1: strangers with benefits<br/>Ch 2: or how to lie to your superiors<br/>Ch 3: honeymoon fluff<br/>Ch 4: Gerald tries to protect Damien<br/>Ch 5: or why walking away is hard enough<br/>Ch 6: in the beginning<br/>Ch 7: strangers with benefits pt. 2<br/>Ch 8: making of a mind link<br/>Ch 9: Gerald pines like a coniferous forest<br/>Ch 10: or metaphors</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. All I Ever Wanted To Tell You

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don’t own the Coldfire trilogy. It belongs to C.S. Friedman. I do own this story. Characters, places, locations and organizations not appearing or being mentioned in the books are also mine.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Damien is sick and tired of their game.

“What do you want from me, Gerald?” Damien asked tiredly. He didn't remember who'd said hope was the worst of all evils but they were so damn right. And now, enough was enough. He was sick and tired of their game of seemingly coincidental meetings. Both knew the other well enough to accurately predict where they would be under certain circumstances. The aftermath of a violent quake, for example, would of course make him try to help if he happened to be in the neighborhood.

“I want you to listen, you stubborn ex-Priest!” the black-haired young man insisted, flinging blankets aside and standing.

Damien turned away from the sight of naked olive skin and heated black eyes. In the clear wintry sky behind the dae's window Prima was slowly rising to join her larger sister high above.

“I think I've listened enough today. And two months ago. And five weeks before that.”

“Then talk to me!”

Damien sighed, turning. “What do I have to do to make you understand I don't want to talk?” He raised his head and squared his shoulders, steeling himself. If this continued he'd never stop hoping one day Gerald would look at him with more than lust in those night dark jewels. “I don't want to talk, I don't want to listen, and I don't want to ever see you again.”


	2. Before It All Ends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's a question of faith.

“You know you have to stop him. That much I can see,” the Patriarch said, and Damien could feel it then, the faintest whisper of fae answering an Adept's need. His ever so carefully Worked sight caught bluish tendrils reaching out.

Damien had known what the old man was right from the start – cases of Adepts who tried to suppress their own abilities as a way to survive Adeptitude had been recorded by the Western Autocracy many times since its foundation. Even if he'd never seen one before he would've known. The difference in the fae's reaction to Ciani and Gerald or to the Patriarch was as vast as the difference between the sun and the moons.

“The question is … would you be able to?”

He'd always been good at Shielding, and learned a thing or two from Gerald on their journeys. And so, he'd come prepared, his love and admiration for the silver-eyed Adept hidden deep down, behind mirror-like Shields where no Knowing, conscious or not, could reach. The rest of his mind left wide open.

The fae surged, and found, and carried back, only his determination and his focus.

He bowed.

“Of course, Your Holiness. It's a question of faith.”


	3. Constants

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The world has changed radically, yet it comforts him to know there are still constants in his life.

The world has changed radically, yet it comforts him to know there are still constants in his life. Gerald complaining about the poor quality of the dae's sheets, for example.

“Look at this,” his other insisted, sitting up and waving the offending piece of fabric around, his thin night black brows angrily drawn together. “They have the audacity to describe this as pure nu-cotton in their ad!”

“Gera-a-ald.” Damien leaned back seductively. The covers slid from his frame as he artfully arched his arm above his head. “This is our honeymoon. I thought you'd be more interested in what's between those sheets,” he added with an exaggerated pout.

Gerald very maturely responded by smacking him with a pillow.


	4. Diptych

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They are made to be apart, but also made to be together.

True Night fell with a vengeance even Tarrant seemed to approve of. Just moments before, the sky had been glowing pale yellow and gold with Coreset, and now... Now all light was gone, Damien's carefully Worked vision barely sufficient as the first wisps of dark fae slowly, lazily rose from the ground.

“I suggest you stay here,” the blond Adept said, ice and darkness in his soft voice. Still, there was something different this time – no less danger, and surely no less predatory pleasure, but an echo of pain and deep sadness. _I'm still what the Unnamed Ones had made me,_ he'd said.

“Your Wards will hold.”

Damien met the silver eyes straight on. “And so will yours.”

The faintest shade of surprise made the other man look astonishingly human.

Damien grinned. Gerald's sigils were intricately woven into his own, building layers beneath. “Please. Did you really think I wouldn't realize someone has tampered with my Work? I'm not an Adept, Gerald, but I'm also not stupid.”

For a second, the Adept looked away. “No, you're not.”

“Then don't go.”

“And what would you offer, for staying my hand?”

Not, it wasn't curiosity in the smooth tones, more like … expectation?

So this was the name of the game. He smiled, and brought his hand to the other's face, running the backs of his fingers across a high cheekbone. More sadness flashed, for the briefest of moments, in those usually unreadable eyes.

“Connection,” Damien Vryce said.


	5. Event Horizon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They can't escape.

“I love you!”

He calmly finished packing. “It isn't enough.” Ever since that night under the Keep when they managed to convince Andrys to let them go and walked away without any additional sacrifices, it wasn't enough.

“Damien, please... Whatever I did, I'm sorry.”

He should've known moving in together was a mistake. No, scratch that – it was a disaster. They would fight, then make up, then fight again in a vicious cycle neither could escape and he simply no longer had the strength to endure.

He straightened. “I'm still leaving, Gerald. Nothing you could do will change that.” Five seemingly endless steps brought him to the door.

“Then what would it take? Tell me.” The beloved silver eyes held despair and confusion.

“Choosing me. Just once, over your books and your research and everything else. But you can't do that.” The sharp pain in his heart didn't show in his voice.“Don't follow me.”

He let the door fall shut behind him.


	6. Frozen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nothing could touch him, deep beneath the ice.

The ice the Hunter so readily surrounded himself with was, in the first place, designed to terrify. But Damien wasn't as blind nor as naïve as Gerald liked to think, and couldn't help but wonder if his reasons went far beyond rejecting warmth as the very definition of life. After all, life existed everywhere, even in the polar ice and Gerald, being the scientist he was, would doubtlessly know about extremophiles, especially since Erna had a great lot more of them than old Terra. And extremely hot temperatures were just as deadly to life, so the other man as easily could've chosen fire.

So why the ice? The fae didn't matter, and didn't care. Any form of it could be used to conjure warmth – earth, solar, tidal, even the dark fae. Pact or no Pact, Gerald would know ice wasn't antithesis to life.

And then Damien would think about the Hunter's carefully controlled emotions, and remember their conversations on powerlessness, and increasingly more often, he would understand.


	7. Gifts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Such a small thing, yet it was the biggest gift ever given to him.

“Didn't I make it clear last time?” Damien sighed. When nothing had happened for half a year since that fateful winter night, he'd stopped looking for a dark head in each and every crowd he encountered. He really should've remembered Gerald's complete and utter inability of letting things go.

“Yes, you did. Crystal clear, even.” The now-familiar, night black eyes held no anger.

“Then what? Surely you didn't run out of people to sleep with.”

“What?!” Incomprehension was written all over youthful features. “It was never about sex!”

“Wasn't it? You could've fooled me.” He turned away again and shouldered his bag, intending to leave the dae.

“Damien, no!” Gerald's voice was full of regret as the other man stepped around, and gripped his hands, those thin fingers strong enough to cause pain. “It wasn't about sex, you know? Not with you. _Never_ with you. I wanted–”

Damien freed himself. “No. We're _not_ friends-with-benefits, Hell, we're not even _friends_.”

The black-haired young man reached out again, and placed something into his palm, curling both their fingers around it.

“No, we aren't. But I want us to be something else. Something more.”

Damien opened his hand. And stared.

It was such a small thing, two keys on a ring, with the emblem of his old Order dangling from a short chain in addition. Such a small thing, yet it was the biggest gift ever given to him.

“Stay with me. Please?”

For the first time in six months, Damien Vryce smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because hobgoblin123 asked for a sequel to Drabble A. That one's for you, hon!


	8. Hearing Your Voice In The Storm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He was drowning.

* * *

And darkness swallowed him.

Chaos, swirling, covering him in tsunami waves of blackness... Emotions, deep and strange, and yet so surprisingly _human_... Hunger. Delight in feeding, sweet, intoxicating taste of the woman's terror... Hunting, choosing his prey. The heady power to decide who's to live and who's to die... A flicker of mercy, because of a girl's understanding of beauty... Curiosity. Boundless, ever-present, burning need to _know_. Whether God exists, whether it's possible to Tame the fae enough to get the stars back, Terra back. A sense of terrible unfairness because even if it could be done, he is doomed to stay on Erna, with fae and fear the only things to sustain him...

Wait. He struggled to separate himself, struggled for the surface, only there _wasn't_ a surface, not here, deep within where the forging of their link had taken them. Only those emotions the Hunter's beautiful face so expertly hid, and for a moment Damien wondered what had happened to the other man to make such a self-control necessary. Yet another tsunami was cresting and he looked around, searching for something to latch on – and there it was, the same small, blindingly bright light that he'd been plunged into just moments ago, and he dived, finding and feeling that intense curiosity again. And deeper yet, into the core, and there was more light and a pain so endless that Damien's heart nearly shattered.

Surprise, at that, not his own. Understanding, slow in coming. Thankfulness. And the silky voice whispered, in wonder. _Damien..._

He met the other with open eyes and without fear. _Gerald._

The link flared to life.


	9. Irrevocably

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> But he wished. Oh, how he wished.

* * *

He watched Damien all the time. He watched him fight, Heal, Work. He saw the other man's determination, his impressive strength, the sheer power in his beautiful body. He liked to think he saw everything, knew everything there was to know about his stubborn companion.

Unsurprisingly, he was soon proven wrong. The man's warmth – so warm, what would it feel like to bask in that warmth, just a little? His compassion – enough to forgive a monster out of the darkest pits of Hell. His pureness – completely without self-delusions, even in the face of allying himself to said monster? The incredibly bright light of Damien's soul – so strong it'd even started to chase away the darkness in Gerald's own atrophied one. He'd been drawn to that light right from the start, like tropism, the blind instinct of a flower, to stretch its leaves and be nourished. And Damien, as generous as the sun itself, had let him get close to his light, and like the flower, Gerald worshiped it. Deep down, in his core, where some semblance of humanity still lurked in the dark corners, he worshiped the light.

In the cold, dark reality of the True Night, poisoned with terror and blood, Gerald Tarrant however didn't, couldn't see that Damien offered so much more. But he wished. Oh, how he wished.


	10. Jigsaw Pieces

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Because that's what they are.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to prove, mostly to myself, that I'm able to write strictly 100 words and have them make sense.

* * *

Their differences, of course, only existed on the surface. Take away Damien being a Healer and Gerald being an Adept, take away Damien's Church and Gerald's Forest, take away everything else, and deep down they were just two jigsaw pieces, in desperate need for being made whole. Underneath it all, where only their loneliness mattered, they fell together easily, to form the answer each had been trying to find for so long. One lifetime or twenty, in the end it didn't matter. Because finally, they were complete, perfect, _one_.

Not even Death itself could separate them.

And so it didn't.


End file.
